One ambitious player has begun to import the whole of Azeroth into Minecraft block by block and, so far, things are actually looking pretty good.

People with way too much time on their hands have been crafting ambitious projects with giant multicolored cubes since Markus "Notch" Persson first went public with his then tiny indie game Minecraft in 2009. So ambitious, in fact, that nowadays it's become difficult to get any sort of recognition for your work without, well, I don't know, recreating an immensely detailed series of massive continents inch by inch or something. Cut to Mojang Forum user Rumsey, and his epic quest to bring all of World of Warcraft (dungeons and all) into the blocky lands of Minecraft.

Accomplishing such a feat requires specialized software that helps transfer the map data into the game, as well as circumvent Minecraft's normal 128 block height limit.

Thus far, Rumsey's already assembled a perfect, though somewhat more angular, recreation of the Kalimdor region, and is preparing to tackle the rest of Azeroth in short order. Once complete, he hopes to make his project public, though as you can probably imagine, it's going to take some serious server space. He's already sitting on a tentative offer from Cursecraft, however, so there seems to be a decent possibility that everyone will have a chance to explore this impressive undertaking for themselves in the near future.

This sort of drive really makes you wonder what the next major Minecraft undertaking will be. All of Daggerfall (reportedly twice the size of Great Britain), perhaps? Or maybe the entire planet using Google Earth satellite data. That may sound ridiculous, but I honestly wonder if I would be surprised hearing about someone actually working on that exact idea.

This sort of drive really makes you wonder what the next major Minecraft undertaking will be. All of Daggerfall (reportedly twice the size of Great Britain), perhaps?

Recreating Daggerfall is easy. You start out with a completely FLAT landscape littered with trees and rocks. Then generate random cities where the little red dots are on the map. Also, a city wall around them. Done.

Redlin5:If there is a fictional universe, a minecrafter will eventually make it.

I could have sworn that was already a rule. I wonder how long it will take for Skyrim or Westeros.

Westeros would be wonderful, but one would only be able to create a replica of a map of Westros. There just isn't enough detail in the books to create the entire continent. Not the George RR Martin hasn't tried. ;p

I am in conflict here. On the one hand I am impressed. On the other hand they should really get a life. I mean with the time you spend on such a project you can do a lot. It doesn't even have to be productive. Could just go out and have some social interaction. Maybe meet a few girls? I'm just throwing out suggestions here.

iseko:I am in conflict here. On the one hand I am impressed. On the other hand they should really get a life. I mean with the time you spend on such a project you can do a lot. It doesn't even have to be productive. Could just go out and have some social interaction. Maybe meet a few girls? I'm just throwing out suggestions here.

Not to pick a fight or anything, but the thing is, you could say this about almost anything. Person paints an awesome detailed piece of art? "Get outside once in a while!" Another writes a book? "Get some friends, dude!" Someone makes a cool little game by himself? "Have you thought of getting a life?" (Even though these are what you might call 'more important' projects than building something in Minecraft, they still share some important things with it: time, effort and creativity.) You can _always_ spend the time you use for thing X to do thing Y. But is it always necessary? The guy who made this could well be into sports and have some friends, there's no way for us to know what his life outside of this project is like.

iseko:I am in conflict here. On the one hand I am impressed. On the other hand they should really get a life. I mean with the time you spend on such a project you can do a lot. It doesn't even have to be productive. Could just go out and have some social interaction. Maybe meet a few girls? I'm just throwing out suggestions here.

Not to pick a fight or anything, but the thing is, you could say this about almost anything. Person paints an awesome detailed piece of art? "Get outside once in a while!" Another writes a book? "Get some friends, dude!" Someone makes a cool little game by himself? "Have you thought of getting a life?" (Even though these are what you might call 'more important' projects than building something in Minecraft, they still share some important things with it: time, effort and creativity.) You can _always_ spend the time you use for thing X to do thing Y. But is it always necessary? The guy who made this could well be into sports and have some friends, there's no way for us to know what his life outside of this project is like.

Hey! Person who thinks life is for doing whatever you find enjoyable that doesn't hurt others! We don't take kindly to your types around here!

I still will maintain that this isn't as impressive as the guys who are currently recreating all of Middle Earth, straight out of the Lord of the Rings books.

They aren't even close to being finished, and yet the world they have created is SO large that they actually reached the farlands and asked Mojang for some kind of fix so they can actually make it to the same size the set out to.

And their are no fancy programs at work, they are actually placing (or in the case of caverns, digging out) ever single block by hand.

I'm more curious how they plan to do the dungeons. Are they gonna try to smoosh dungeons in the world, or actually instance them? Is instancing possible in Minecraft? And are they going to try to do Outlands? What about the Maelstrom?